Do you feel your neg. emotions ok/good enough with others?

You seek approval from others. That sets you up for highs and lows based on inaccurate perceptions of others. In other words, defining how you should feel based on trying to impress or please others sets you up for cyclical failure.

Why do think you seek approval from other people instead of seeking approval from yourself?

I feel negative emotions when I fail myself. My standard for approval that triggers my emotions is when I violate my own values.

For instance, if you don’t approve of my response I don’t care. Your approval or disapproval means nothing. But, sometimes I engage in conversations that don’t meet my personal standards I have set for myself. I feel negative emotions when I violate my own standards. Does that make sense?

This provides me a solid foundation which I have control over. I endeavor to be a better version of me today than I was yesterday as defined by me, no one else.

This allows me to handle the very normal pain of social rejection and failure in general. It allows me to even seek out rejection, to seek out failure and to celebrate failure.

Coincidence...reading some Nietzsche today and thought it apt for this particular thread.

It may be looked upon as the result of an extraordinary atavism, that the ordinary man, even at present, is still always waiting for an opinion about himself, and then instinctively submitting himself to it; yet by no means only to a “good” opinion, but also to a bad and unjust one